Once I got everyone paid off, I bought a new car: a 1970 Plymouth Sport Fury.
While the car was brand new and before I had the plates, I drove it around just to see the South Bend area and try the car out. I was stopped by the local police for not having license plates. I was arrested, the car towed, and taken to the local night court at somebody’s house. I learned that in Indiana, they had Justices of the Peace that dished out instant justice. I was fined for not having plates that I had to pay then and there. I might have not been hauled in if I could have produced the purchase and registration application but I forgot where in the car they were. I thought under the front seat but in my confusion about being stopped and my fear of police, I could not find them. They were not in the glove box.
The cops drove me home. The next day I went to the tow truck place to pick up my car. I knew the papers were there someplace. I found them and the tow truck place released the car to me: that was the rule produce papers or they kept the car until I did. The tow place charged me half price because I was a good guy and they did not like the police any better than I did.
Once or twice I drove to Madison with my new car. One weekend it was seriously cold and had snowed. Connie and I and a few others hopped in the car, drove around town, and helped people stuck in the snow to get unstuck. The problem I had then was my Pepsi. Soda was going to disposible bottles. The returnable bottles were very heavy glass. The disposible bottles were thin. They broke when the soda froze. Pepsi has a lot of sugar which makes it freeze at a lower temperature than plain water but when the bottle breaks, there is a mess on my back carpets. If I caught the breakage before it thawed, it was just a matter of cleaning up glass and ice. If it thawed, I had to extract the soda from the carpet. This was never easy nor fun.
I now parked my car next to but not in the executive parking lot. People started saying good morning to me that never had before. Foo.
Then one weekend, Easter Weekend, I drove to Madison. Or at least I started to. I left very early Good Friday morning and me being cheap, took US 20 across Indiana towards Chicago. I never took the Indiana toll road as I thought the toll road was illegally charging for its use. I made it as far as Michigan City when my world changed.
I had done this many times. There was a point where the highway crossed the train tracks. Many years ago this had been a grade crossing. The road had run parallel to the tracks on the north side since South Bend. It was now crossing to the south side. The road made an s-curve so that it crossed the tracks at a ninety-degree angle. You did not want to speed through this s-curve when the grade crossing was there. But now there was an underpass for the road. It expanded the curve a little but it was still something you drove with some caution. You could not see it coming as the road took a sudden dip to go under the tracks at the same time it curved to the left. Under the bridge it then curved back to the right as you came back up next to the tracks but on the other side. Big concrete walls under the bridge. A gas station just west of the crossing and the curves.
In any case, this morning, I went around and under and was faced with a 3-foot or higher wall of ice and snow. Not a chance I could see it ahead of time. It had not snowed for a day so there was only one way it could get there. During the night a train plow had cleared the tracks and spewed this collection of ice and junk over the bridge and down onto the road. I was the first to try to cross it.
I hit the wall of ice and went into a spin. The road was 4 lanes at this point. I started in the right lane, spun around a few times and ended up in the far left lane. Wow. I made it. Then the world went black. I never saw the semi that I hit. I only saw my car collapsing and then I died.
I found out much later that the gas station had made multiple calls to the highway patrol trying to get the road cleared. The highway patrol ticketed me for falling asleep as the reason for not making the curve. Asleep? It was five in the morning and I was at my best or I would not have recovered that spin. I hate liars. Especially liars in a position of authority. Espcially when they are copping out of their responsibility. But then I found this all out about a year after the accident when I obtained a copy of my driving record and the accident report.
In any case, I was now dead. The car was a total wreck. I used to have pictures. The car's front end was so collapsed that the passenger side headrest was wrapped up in the windshield molding. I remember because later we extricated my sport coat with great difficulty. Most of my belongings had been recovered by the tow truck driver – after he had scared away the local Indiana residents who were robbing things out of the car while I was still in it, dead.
Well, not really dead. The police had not bothered to see if I
had survived. They presumed I was dead. Their mistake could
have been
fatal. The tow truck driver noticed
that I was still breathing and called for help. I was admitted to
Memorial Hospital in
Michigan City 3 hours after the accident. God had a reason for me
to still be alive.
Easter Sunday morning I came out of the coma. I had to be reassured that I was waking up after the accident because I remembered dying in the accident. At the time I had asked God to tell the girls (Connie and friends) that I was OK, just dead. Thank you, God, for the good life.
But I woke up. I
had a 3-inch bruise around my waist from the seat belt. No
shoulder harness because in those
days the shoulder harness was a separate belt with no impact
expansion. With the shoulder harness on, I could
barely reach the steering wheel. I
could not reach the dash panel. I never wore the shoulder harness
as it
made it impossible to drive. Maybe
I would have been saved the concussion –
something the hospital had no interest I treating. They checked
for potential internal injuries
from the seat belt and a few cuts and scrapes and sent me home when I
recovered from the coma.
I had some cuts on my right wrist from the carburetor trying to get to the back seat. I had major chips of glass embedded throughout my scalp. It turned out that I had hit my head on the windshield molding and then bounced into the glass. This left me with a serious concussion but the glass had not punctured my skull nor had it gotten to my eyes.
Waking up on Easter Sunday made me sure that God was watching out for me.
The hospital in the mean time had done me no other favors. I had a little blue book in my wallet with lots of names of friends. They called every name in the book asking for my parents. My parents’ name was not in my book. The hospital clerk was very rude in their calls. They identified themselves only as ‘Memorial Hospital’ and when the subject of the call could not identify my parents, they hung up with no more words. This made all of my friends get very worried. One friend called back: Gary Leive. He got an operator to work with him and called every hospital from Milwaukee and Madison to South Bend having Memorial in its name. He told me that there were 51 such hospitals just in Chicago. But he was there the day I woke up. I have never had many friends but the friends I do have are the premium type of friend. Thanks, Gary.
Another good friend was Rod Reber. He was a manager at Bendix in the programming area. He was there. Since I turned off and on like a light switch for a couple of days, I do not know how much Gary and Rod were at my bedside. I was released on Tuesday under the care of Rod. We first went to the junk yard to recover my belongings from the car, took a few pictures, and then returned to my apartment in Mishawaka.
Rod picked me up and delivered me for the next several days. This was a great friend. I really could not work much as I still turned on and off like a light bulb. My memory was shot. But by being in the office, people could make sure I did not drop dead in my apartment when nobody was looking. Thank you Emery Johnson, Bob Ball, and the rest of my management for paying me while they babysat me.
I saw a doctor, an expensive doctor. He told me that the concussion was serious and that I needed to care for it. Sleep as much as possible. Eat good meals. Watch the exercise level. He told me that I would randomly black out and told me that my memories would probably come back.
I made the mistake of calling my parents the next week. They drove down in their new Dodge Challenger and took me back to Green Bay. No input from me. Nothing. They just did it. Finally in Chicago, I convinced them that this was not acceptable and I considered it kidnapping. They drove me to Connie’s in Madison and she cared for me for the weekend.
The girls (Connie's roommates) were assigned to watch me since my behavior was unpredictable. In fact one afternoon I woke up in the middle of the Interstate median and they came and got me. One of the girls was in trouble for not watching close enough. I had no idea how I got 5 miles away in the middle of the grass median.
I took the Greyhound back to South Bend. Or at least I think so. I was rousted by the Chicago police for vagrancy when I could not find my wallet. I found it outside the station I my backpack. The police let me return and wait for the bus but suggested I not go back to sleep.
The memory problems continued. I went to my deviant sociology class and picked up my 12-week exam. The day prior to the final exam. I did not remember taking this exam. I went to the dean (who was also my prof) and asked to drop the course with an incomplete on the absolute last day of the school year. He permitted this with some reluctance. Understandable. But I never would remember anything useful from that class as the last third I missed a lot and my memory was defunct.
The Plymouth dealer had called and told me they would replace the car with whatever I could wangle out of the insurance company. This was really great of them because I had always bitched about the amount of time they had the car to repair problems and we would be starting all over again. Also the initial settlement suggestion by the insurance company was for $2,800. This really made me angry: half the price for a 90-day old car. I told them to talk to the dealer. They upped the price to $4,300. This paid off most of the loan. I did not want to go through another session with warrantee repairs and the gas costs were running me broke.
Gas? Gasoline had gone up to 29.9¢ per gallon for regular -- and this car required premium. The car got 8 miles per gallon in the city and 18 on the highway. And what I heard about high-performance cars was true: if it did not get a good highway run once a week, it clogged up and the city mileage got much worse. When I got a new car, it would have better mileage.
I took the bus to Milwaukee and bought my new car: an orange Opel GT.
In June or July, Gary Leive
passed through town on his way to Miami. The Army had sent him to
Panama. I think he had a red Mustang but it could have been
anything. We looked at the moon that night: it was
the night of the famous astronaut moonwalk. He was leaving his
fiancé in
Rochester. I forget her name. She was a good woman.
I enjoyed life at the University extension so much that I signed up for an additional course in deviant sociology in January. Also in January the University Wisconsin sent me a diploma. I took the diploma and never looked back.
<>Susan had gotten
pregnant in
the first time that we had sex. At the
time unmarried people buying condoms in
I joined a group
that was
active at this house. We had song fests
on Friday nights. We had to be careful
to keep the sound level down so that we would not upset the neighbors. We had to appeal to the dean to keep our house
but that was successful. Drugs were
problem. Upstairs was a problem. We said people who insisted on using drugs to
my apartment. Not real bright but it
worked.
So I showed up the following
week and demanded my paycheck. After the
third office they wrote me my check and I showed them how to remove the
Easter
egg. I hate Easter eggs.
I had worked hard for these programs and
deserved to be paid.